I have a dual boot system with windows xp on my master hard drive and slackware 10.0 kde 3.2.3 on my slave hard drive. I edited my fstab so that I could access my windows partition when logged in as a normal user. I can now access my windows drive when logged in as a normal user.

However, I cannot use any files that I copy from my windows drive to my linux drive when logged in as a normal user. The icons have a padlock symbol over them. When I log in as a root I have no problem doing this.

How can I fix permissions so that files moved from my windows xp ntfs partition to my linux partition work when I am logged in as a normal user???

read up on chmod

You edited your /etc/fstab inserting umask = 277 in the Windows line, is that right?

Mine reads umask = 000 and all users have full read/write permissions

Good luck

Another option to consider using is uid=.

Use either your user id number, or your login name. This way you become the owner of the xp partition. If someone else is logged in and you have the permissions set for owner only access, then you have exclusive access (except for root).

The ntfs file system is currently read only, so chmod doesn't work. Instead use the options fmask= and dmask=. The fmask is for setting the permissions for the files on the ntfs partition. The dmask is for setting the directory permissions. So suppose you user name is 'johnd'.

You could have the options
uid=johnd,fmask=0177,dmask=0077

Thx guys, umask=000 seems to work.

Can anyone tell me what these numbers mean or point me in the direction of some documentation where I can find this out?

Thanks again

I have found the following links. You might find what you want here.

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/tips/tip-1.html

http://www.faqs.org/docs/linux_intro/sect_03_04.html

I haven't found anything else of much use.

Mikie

They're binary numbers. For instance chmod 777 <file> is equal to rwx-rwx-rwx(421-421-421), where the first group of numbers is for root, second is for users, third is for the whole world. If you wanted root to have full rights, users to have read & execute, and the world to have read-only access, use chmod 754 <file> (rwx--r-x--r--(421-401-400)).

Hope that helps =)

Thanks aeNeo.

I'm still a bit confused by what umask is supposed to do. Take a look at this extract from the second link that I posted above: -

"The umask value is subtracted from these default permissions after the function has created the new file or directory. Thus, a directory will have permissions of 775 by default, a file 664, if the mask value is (0)002."

What I'm asking is, If chmod sets file permissions, then why umask?

Thx guys, that was very useful